Adrian Blackwood

Adrian gestured to Lydia, who had commandeered the list back at his cottage. "Reagents and things are that way," he said, pointing further in, past the outer rings of booths that sold purely mundane designer and luxury items. "Unfortunately, the deeper in we go, the more Guards and also the closer to the slave pens. It might take me awhile to find what I'm looking for, unfortunately--Boston knows more about rare reagents than I do, it's one of his specialties. But he's--" Adrian gestured towards his invisible coat pocket, it would look like an idle motion to anyone watching. "--so we've got to go about it the hard way. Fortunately, I have you three to talk to, so it's not like I have to start describing things to myself out loud."

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"You speak as if you're the only one capable of shopping for magical ingredients and must do this all yourself," Lydia chided him. She was the one holding the list, after all.

"Well, come along. Let's skip past the boring stuff." Those were designer goods you were pooh-poohing, Lydia.

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"I'm afraid I'll be less helpful when it comes to actual shopping," Rey warned, like she wasn't clearly here in bodyguard mode.

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"And as you know, plants are more my specialty."

Her abilities with pheromones, though, were diminished, but not as much as they used to be.

Edited Date: 2025-08-19 06:16 pm (UTC)

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With the posture and body language he remembered from some of the younger warlocks, the ones who had just finished their apprenticeship and were happy to lord it over the rest of them, Adrian offered his arms to whoever wanted to take them and began to stroll down the paths between the booths.

Partway through, though, he checked his steps, nearly stumbling. "Ah. Maybe we should go a different way," he murmured. In front of them were a group of men standing in front of a booth. Their hands were covered with various rings and tattoos, and each of them had at least two or three demons nearby. Four-armed, red-skinned war demons were well-represented, but there were also a few slender green greed demons scattered about. None of the warlocks seemed to be interested in purchasing anything, but they loomed and leered, making it difficult for any potential customers to get to the booth proper.

BLACKWOOD COSMETICS was the name on the sign, and inside the booth were two women, dressed all in black and wearing tall black hats.

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Lydia paused in the middle of tearing off the section of the list with all the plant-based materials to delegate to Dr. Isley to look for the problem.

She finished the tearing and held the paper out to Dr. Isley. "Perhaps you should, if you're too manly to be seen shopping for cosmetics," she sniffed at Adrian, then asked Dr. Isley, "Would you like to make use of your expertise by looking for those for us? After we've stopped at this charming cosmetics shop, of course."

Sorry, Rey. She didn't trust you with shopping yet.

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It was for the best, really.

Having taken Adrian's arm, it was easier to position herself so that she could step in the way if needed and murmured, "Definitely not friends. Do you know how to get around them?"

Or she'd trust Lydia to Lydia her way through.

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Pam took the list, and passed it an idle look. "I'd be happy to make use of my expertise," she said, and her eyes flicked up to Adrian's. And then to those men. "In more ways than one."

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"I just don't think we should bother them," Adrian said, a little lamely. "They're already having enough trouble...seems wrong to add to it..."

You know, since it would be his fault all the way around. Again.

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"We're not going to bother them," Lydia scoffed, belatedly realizing they should have come up with an alias for Adrian before setting off on this little jaunt. Something to keep in mind for next time. (Possibly a chill just went down Adrian's spine.) "It's not our fault all this...riffraff is in the way."

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"Is it safe for them?" Rey checked, and added, "Relatively?"

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Pam sighed. "You're all very cute," she said. She shifted, moving so she was facing all of them - so it looked like they really were just having a conversational huddle.

Tiny particles of lamia spores drifted away from her, from underneath the disguise. They weren't visible to the eye, unless you had supernaturally intense eyesight.

They drifted on the wind, directed with nary a thought. They settled on skin and between leering teeth, wafted through upturned noses. Ivy told them to play, but briefly; to settle and die in ten minutes or so, their purpose expended, so they'd be washed out of those bodies before anyone would ever be able to tell they'd been there in the first place.

It wouldn't take long. Barely a few moments, really, for the world to start blurring just a little at the edges, turning shades of red, yellow, green-- to make it seem as if any tucked-away blade of grass between the stones was calling to them, and living things, so far away, were suddenly breathing companionably down their necks.

Nature was calling.

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Adrian had no idea Ivy was doing anything, mostly because he'd spent some time staring into middle distance at Lydia's mention of 'next time.' "Technically the warlocks can't interfere with customers who want to shop," he said. "He can just make it so that most people don't want to. And I definitely can't go over there. I don't know if my cousins or any of the warlocks will recognize me, but it doesn't seem like a brilliant idea to give anybody the opportunity to try."

Several of the demons started sneezing. Weird.

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"Well, that's very rude of them," Lydia declared. "And don't be ridiculous. No one who recognized you dressed like that would acknowledge the connexion."

Damn, Lydia.

"But if you don't wish for us to give custom to the Blackwoods, I suppose we can move on." Alas.

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"Maybe they'll be gone if we come back later, if we really need something that way," Rey said. She was planning on following Adrian's lead through all of this. "Though I like knowing where they are."

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It wasn't that Pam could direct these men, per se. Not without a much more significant lamia infection, which would have its own downsides. But she could give a whisp of an instruction: a longing for the meadows, a desire to put one's hands in the soil.

She did.

And listened for more telling sounds than coughing.

Edited Date: 2025-08-20 02:16 am (UTC)

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There was some shifting, some more coughing. A soft murmur from behind them. And then suddenly the group of warlocks and their demons all headed over towards the open meadows, a slow drifting forward.

"Wait, what does that mean?" he demanded of Lydia. "This is a very expensive suit! And--wait, where are the warlocks going?"

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Lydia wasn't dignifying that with a response.

His relatives would have been much less likely to recognize him if he was wearing a color, she was just saying.

"What does it matter where they're going? They're not in our way any more. And I was just getting ready to do my best Caroline Bingley impersonation," she sighed. Oh, well. Onward.

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"How long should that last?" Rey checked, figuring they would probably garner more attention not going one way or another.

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"Fifteen minutes, at least," Pam said. Idly. "I sent them on a little 'shroom trip."

Don't flail, Adrian.

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"You--?" Adrian sighed, looking at the warlocks who were giddily sitting in the meadows. They were drawing attention, but he supposed at least that wasn't attention that was on their little group? "Just as long as nobody thinks that it was witchcraft that did that," he said. "Since it targeted the warlocks at their booth..."

You know, he couldn't think about that now.

"The reagents and plants are that way," he said, pointing. "Shall we? Or, Lydia, did you want to stop at my family's booth...?" He sounded less uneasy about that possibility, but he wasn't not uneasy.

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If everyone had just followed Lydia's lead and bulled through the warlocks like they were horribly rude for being between them and goods they wanted to buy it would have been less suspicious, Lydia was pretty sure, but she should probably be used to no one following her lead by now. She was just silly Lydia Bennet, after all.

"Oh, no," Lydia said through a smile verging on gritted teeth. "We are here for your list, after all. It isn't our fault or anything to do with the witches if those fools took some new drug or other, which is surely what happened, as I shall be happy to tell any shopkeep who comments on their antics."

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"All right, let's assume we only have that fifteen minutes," Rey said. "If anyone really wants to stop there, I'd say now's your chance, otherwise we should just get what we came for and we'll worry about what it looks like if it comes up, and hopefully we don't have to find out if mind tricks work on warlocks."

She wasn't confident they would, therefore she'd rather not chance it.

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More suspicious? Maybe. But no one would be looking at - or remembering - their faces now.

"Besides, like those boys don't know what drugs feel like," Pam told Adrian, with an idle shrug. "Let's go say hi, instead of conspicuously huddling together in the open market."

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